Rwandan authorities have restricted funeral sizes for victims of Marburg virus in an effort to curb an outbreak of the highly contagious disease.
Eight people have died during Rwanda’s first outbreak of the virus, which was confirmed on Friday by the nation’s health ministry.
Marburg, with a fatality rate of up to 88%, is from the same virus family as Ebola.
What is the Marburg virus and how dangerous is it?
The country’s health minister said on Sunday that officials were tracking about 300 people who had come into contact with individuals affected by the Marburg virus.
In an attempt to contain an outbreak of the highly contagious disease, Rwandan authorities have limited the size of funerals for Marburg virus victims.
Rwanda’s health ministry confirmed on Friday that eight people had perished in the country’s first virus outbreak.
Marburg belongs to the same virus family as Ebola and has a death rate of up to 88%. Fruit bats carry the virus, and humans contract it through coming into contact with the bodily fluids of infected people.
The health ministry said that the maximum number of people who should attend a funeral for someone who passed away from Marburg should be 50 in order to stop the disease’s spread.
What is the Marburg virus, and what is its level of danger?
“Normal business and other activities” can continue in the East African country, said the advisory, published on Sunday evening.
It also advised the public to stay away from “symptomatic individuals” in close proximity. The symptoms included fever, headaches, aches in the muscles, vomiting, and diarrhea, according to the ministry.
Severe blood loss can be fatally caused by this virus.
According to the health ministry’s guidelines, hospital patients would not be allowed to have visitors for the following fourteen days.
The guidelines also stated that patients would only be permitted to have one caregiver at a time.
Basic care duties, like feeding and washing, are often carried out by patients’ loved ones in developing nations, but in other countries, nurses handle these duties.
The majority of the victims, according to Rwanda’s health minister, were medical staff members in an intensive care unit at a hospital, on Saturday, when the official death toll stood at six.
The majority of recorded cases have been in Kigali, the heavily populated capital city; however, prior outbreaks have frequently occurred in isolated rural areas where they were easier to contain. Dr. Nahid Bhadelia, director of the Boston University Center on Emerging Infectious Diseases, told the BBC’s Newsday program that containing the virus could prove difficult.
She did, however, add that there was hope because Rwanda “has a lot better infrastructure and history of public health coordination that many other countries.”.
Rwanda declared that in an effort to slow the spread, it was stepping up testing, surveillance, and contact tracing.
About 300 people who had come into contact with Marburg virus-affected individuals were being tracked by officials, the nation’s health minister said on Sunday.
Public hygiene, including frequent hand washing, has been encouraged by the authorities.
Marburg has never before been verified in Rwanda.
An outbreak was reported in neighboring Tanzania in 2023, and three fatalities were reported in Uganda in 2017.
